We are already back with a new tutorial for our followers that are willing to start with that amazing product called Photoshop! It’s such a broad software that needs years to be mastered, but it’s never too late to start and have some fun! This tutorial will be focused on Selections and Masks.
We are already back with a new tutorial for our followers that are willing to start with that amazing product called Photoshop! It’s such a broad software that needs years to be mastered, but it’s never too late to start and have some fun! This tutorial will be focused on Selections and Masks.
Using the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tools
The purpose of the marquee tool is used to select a particular area of the image so you can make changes to it.
First click on the layer and choose the rectangular marquee or elliptical marquee tool. Select the area on the layer you want to be selected and by dragging the tool across the layer.
There will be a line of marching ants around the selected layer.
Now I can do what I wish to do with the selected layer. For example, I will ‘delete’ the selected area.
I pressed delete and this is what happened:
Using the lasso tool
Is very similar to the marquee tool except lasso tool is used for a ‘loose’ area or something which doesn’t have a definite shape. Click on your layer, select the lasso tool and drag it around the desired area on your image.
The marching ants will appear around the selected area on the image. Suppose you want to erase the ice-cream off and only want to keep the cone. Press delete and watch what happens.
My ice-cream scoop disappeared!
The polygonal lasso tool is similar to the lasso tool except for the fact that with the polygonal lasso tool you use it on shapes with definite corners such as a triangle and you can manipulate it the way you want.
Deleting selected pixels
When deleting selected pixels of a layer, it will automatically give you the grey and white tiled background. Using the lasso or marquee tool you can complete this action. Drag around the area you want to manipulate and make sure those ‘marching ants’ appear. I used the same ice cream image and pressed delete and you can see the tiled background appear instead of the ice-cream.
Moving selection contents
You can move a selected part of the image without manipulating its contents. Using the same lasso tool, I cropped the ice-cream and I moved it to the side to demonstrate how you can adjust your image.
Using the quick selection tools
The quick selection tool is similar to the marquee and lasso tool but this tool is more precise because it detects your color boundaries.
Firstly, click on the quick selection tool.
Using the magic wand tool
This tool is simply used by clicking a color on the image and it will select all the adjacent pixels of the same shade or color on the image. To select areas with the Magic Wand tool, click on the magic wand tool then click a color on the image.
After selecting the magic wand tool and click on a particular area of the icecream, all the similar shades of the color was selected. After using this tool, you can manipulate it however you want.
Using the color range command and Hiding and showing selection edges
If the ‘marching ants’ start to get annoying you can always disable them but do remember that when you are making changes, you will still be able to see the changes made to the image despite the marching ants not being present.
Swapping the selected and unselected areas
When selecting an area, you can swap the selected areas with the unselected areas. You can either do this by right clicking on your image and selecting ‘select inverse’ or you can press ctrl-shift-I.
right click and this is what will appear on your screen,
After click on ‘select inverse’ this is what happened to my image.
You can reverse the step by repeating the same process.
Hope you find our simple tutorials useful. We are in the beginner world of course but we will consider some intermediate ones if welcome.
Cannot wait till the next tutorial, do you want to learn more and faster?
Contact us for any inquiry or information, our website is pretty clear but we will be glad to hear directly from you for any doubt!
